i was wrong about the issue, this was actually a surprisingly simple fix

README.html

@@ -189,10 +189,6 @@ state.</li>
 <ul>
 <li>Text drawing: Pango will sometimes spit out errors for invalid
 markup. Silencing this would be a good idea.</li>
-<li>Items: If we have zero lines, the width of items that contain SGR
-sequences will be the max size of one item. This is fine, and there is
-not much I can do about it without significant rewrites I don’t think
-are worth doing.</li>
 <li>Image support: Images take a long time to load sometimes,
 particularly when items are selected using the cursor so what we really
 need is a way to skip over images after a set time limit</li>

README.md

@@ -151,9 +151,6 @@ like you will be unable to use spmenu in its current state.
 
 - Text drawing: Pango will sometimes spit out errors for invalid markup.
 Silencing this would be a good idea.
-- Items: If we have zero lines, the width of items that contain SGR sequences
-will be the max size of one item. This is fine, and there is not much I can do
-about it without significant rewrites I don't think are worth doing.
 - Image support: Images take a long time to load sometimes, particularly when
 items are selected using the cursor so what we really need is a way to
 skip over images after a set time limit

libs/draw.c

@@ -76,6 +76,10 @@ drawitemtext(struct item *item, int x, int y, int w)
 			if (item->text[rd + alen + 2] == 'm') { // last character in sequence is always 'm'
 				buffer[wr] = '\0';
 
+                if (!lines) {
+                    w -= item->text[rd + alen];
+                }
+
                 apply_fribidi(buffer);
 				drw_text(drw, x, y, MIN(w, TEXTW(buffer) - lrpad) + leftpadding, bh, leftpadding, isrtl ? fribidi_text : buffer, 0, pango_item ? True : False);